1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for image processing, and a recording medium storing a computer program product for image processing, and more particularly to a method and an apparatus for controlling image processing to perform extraction assured embedding, and a recording medium storing a computer program product for controlling image processing.
2. Discussion of the Background Art
Recently, background art has been developed to add value to a print material which serves as a recording medium. The background art embeds information in the print material in addition to its original contents so that a value-added print material can be provided. Examples of information to be embedded in a print material include information for a security purpose, information to protect contents of the print material, a link to source data of the print material such as digital data and a web page, and so forth. The background art embeds such information by arranging a predetermined pattern on a print material.
An example of the background art uses a dot code to embed information in a print material. In the example, a reference point referred to as a marker is arranged at each of four corners of the print material, and a plurality of blocks including dot images representing the information are arranged inside an area enclosed by the markers.
Another example of the background art adopts a spatial reference method of a self-clocking glyph code and an optically readable record to embed information in a print material. In the example, patterns including a slash mark and a backslash mark representing the information are two-dimensionally arranged in a background of the print material.
The contents of the print material indicate whether information is embedded in the print material. To extract information from the print material, a mechanism needs to initially check whether the information is able to be embedded.